Diplomatic Victory too easy?

[civplayer33]

Communitas, Large, Epic, Emperor
I have more than twice the required number of delegates and this is the first hegemony proposal (I win next turn) and I did not maximize my delegate number completely (could have planted even more embassies and used more diplomats in foreign capitals for higher Globalization boost and allied the only remaining CS). About half the civs in this game picked Statecraft and with my vassals the total votes for me are at 136.
To be fair, Germany is the best civ for DV, I started snowballing in Industrial Era, eliminated or vassalized almost all challengers and am getting close to CV as well and almost researched all techs now so I can basically pick my victory condition but I have always found Diplomatic Victory to be a bit too easy since I always obtained it when I was going for it.

Things that I think could be improved to make it non-arbitrarily harder:

1. Make the AI place a greater focus on CS alliances; I can't even remember the last time I produced a diplomatic unit in this game, I hold the alliances with quests and spycraft only. There are way too few coup attempts and not enough diplo unit spam by the AI; only one or two CS have been non-allied for the last 100 or so turns which I could have easily changed if I wanted to despite some rivals that were still around back then (I weakened and vassalized 1 strong and 2 medium civs in the last 50 turns).

2. Weaken Palace of Westminster (e.g. 2 delegates for every 8 CS instead of 3)

3. Make the AI place a greater value on erecting CS embassies; the AI mostly seems to use their Great Diplomats for diplomatic missions which is only a short term gain and they even do this in situations where they do not get the allegiance of the CS as a result, which basically makes no sense.

One could argue that I should just play at Immortal (or Deity) which would make it hard to get into such a dominant position but even when the game doesn't go as well as it did here I still obtain DV rather easily if I go for it. I think the mere fact that it is possible to get about 250% the required votes (with vassal votes and not even at maximum) shows that it is too easy.

 

[Ziad]

You're playing Germany which can easily snowball off successful city state relations. Just look at their UA. A few early game alliances can provide massive yields which put you in the lead.

You did everything right. You should win.

Now try playing on Deity

I do agree that even non diplomatic civs place too much priority on Great Diplomats which they often end up spending for minor influence gains.

Case in point: Maya in my current game used 1st proc on a GD, which they spent on some influence in a very distant city state which they promptly lost in a few turns. If it were an embassy it would have made sense.

 

[Enginseer]

It is only a problem after non-Germany civs can win them.

Besides you can modify the flavors easily in the CSD options and UCS already makes ai compete harder for city states.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I don’t have any opinion on how easy diplomatic victory is in comparison to other victories, but I have noticed that when you’re competing for diplomatic victory, you can typically amass the required votes long before the global hegemony vote becomes available. As a result, the late game for diplomatic players is focused more on rushing science to unlock Telecommunications than actually competing diplomatically.

 

[civplayer33]

It is only a problem after non-Germany civs can win them.

Besides you can modify the flavors easily in the CSD options and UCS already makes ai compete harder for city states.

I didn't even know about the Options file for CSD, thanks for pointing it out!

I don’t have any opinion on how easy diplomatic victory is in comparison to other victories, but I have noticed that when you’re competing for diplomatic victory, you can typically amass the required votes long before the global hegemony vote becomes available. As a result, the late game for diplomatic players is focused more on rushing science to unlock Telecommunications than actually competing diplomatically.

Good point, I experienced this as well; now that I think about it that way it seems DVs have a rather large scientific race element. The question is whether this is desired; I'm not sure.

Even if it is this still leaves the Great Diplomat behavior which as Ziad pointed out as well seems to be less than optimal; the AI should give more weight to establishing embassies. Maybe @Gazebo could take a look at that AI element since the expansion is in the polishing phase?

 

[lunker]

I think DV is mostly fine as it is. It usually happens around the same time as SV or CV in my games. I will say that I have never seen the AI amass as many delegates as me though.